Setting: Three weeks after the first deployment of the U.S.S. Enterprise under Captain Kirk's command. Alternate-Universe (Movie).

Space really was the final frontier. It would be irresponsible of him to dwell on its vastness in conjunction with the recent demise of his home-world of Vulcan, but the thoughts were there. They hovered just beneath an icy determined control, like shadows beneath the surface of a frozen lake. In meditation the events leading up to and after it’s destruction played over in precise clarity and time and time again he denied himself the abandon of emotion. One by one he locked them away. Fear, regret, sorrow, and anguish, but most of all his anger.

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Space Pirates! Original character for a new genre. Taylon Karde. Subject to some changes as we go along but this is the basic idea.

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Detaching was never my issue, in fact I excel at it. Even with the strained syllables in Gabriel's voice I don't let them affect me. I can't. The moment I do is the moment I start to get weaker and weaker until someone, or both of us, ends up dead. Someone has to keep a level head around here and I silently volunteer. "Because it's what I do, Gabe." That should be a simple enough response to his question of why I hunt, but I can hear the light sigh even if Gabriel tried to hide it. "It would be wonderful to believe everything that's out there has a choice to be good or evil and that, like you, it chooses to be good, but it doesn't work that way. If you think it's just werewolves and vampires, I envy your innocence." Envied it and wanted to protect it, but how could I argue my point without letting Gabriel know the depths that other world went to. "At least I make the distinction now, between those who can choose and those that can't or won't." I wasn't the Order now, I had my own set of rules and my own freedom to hunt what I wanted to. Gabriel had to understand at least that much. It never was about the killing for me, I was always detached from it.

I could hear through the silence those words left unspoken and if I tried I knew I could enter Gabriel’s mind and pick it apart for what I needed to know. It was tempting, I am not going to lie. Will power was never a shortcoming for me and I held back the reigns of my mental powers with a practiced ease. If it became vital to get my point across perhaps I would delve into that artistic mind to better understand how to talk to him, but until then I could not and would not invade his privacy. 

“My innocence?” Gabriel’s voice was almost foreign to my ears, perhaps I had struck a nerve. “How ironic.”

“A poor choice of words,” I conceded without losing any argumentative ground. “You have a good deal of understanding about your own ‘condition’,” I chose my words carefully, this was treacherous and very uncharted ground my feet were treading over. Highly unpredictable. “However, I doubt you know what else is really out there, and I’m not talking about the Fey Children and their courts; they are truly children in comparison.”

“Comparison to what? I know there’s something you’re not telling me Vincent, I’ve known for weeks now  and I’ve given you the time and the opportunity to share it with me. Now I’m insisting.”

That was a slight shock. Gabriel excelled at patience, this much I knew, but I had not picked up on his willingness to keep curiosity at bay. I wouldn’t have. I would have backed him into a metaphorical, and possibly physical, wall and forced the information out of him if he ever kept something of importance from me. In my defense it was for Gabriel’s own protection that I kept him in the so called ‘dark’.

“You were a religious man once and possibly still are,” I started to ease him into it drawing on personal experience to help explain the very real threat everyone faced yet had no clue about. “Then maybe it won’t be so difficult for you to believe that hell is very real.”

I let my arms fold across my chest, a position I liked to take when I felt vulnerable. Why I felt vulnerable in front of Gabriel I couldn’t tell. Perhaps because I was opening up a new world for him and it wasn’t one I ever wanted to be a part of let alone share. “In the past few months there have been over eighty possessions in this city alone. Some of them are repeats so that does not represent the actual number of demonic presence here but I wouldn’t celebrate just yet. Only a year ago one or two possessions were the most The Order would ever see…globally.”

The silence was deafening and I would give anything for it to break. It was understandable that Gabriel needed time to process that kind of information but the anticipation and anxiety were starting to get to me. Idly I wondered just how antsy I looked with my fingers now sweeping over my shirt checking for missing buttons or wrinkles to smooth out.

“What does this mean?” Oddly enough Gabriel didn’t sound nervous or upset. Why should that surprise me? There was a certain calmness about Gabe that drew me a pace closer. Maybe it would rub off. I wasn’t panicked, at least not yet, and I rarely ever let it show when I was anxious but at the moment I was fairly sure Gabriel could see it. If I didn’t know what anxiety looked like how was I supposed to know what exactly I should be hiding?

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. Perhaps the uncertainty was what bothered me the most. I never did well with the unknown. “The Order seems to think we’re facing Armageddon, aharit ha-yamim,
Ragnarok, Qiyamah, or whatever it is you want to call it. I’m not so dramatic but I do believe we’re about to go to war and that souls do lie in the balance. Now, ask me again why I’m still hunting.”

“But what can you, one man, do about it?” There were times I appreciated Gabriel’s blunt honesty, this was not one of those times. “I don’t mean to insult you, Vincent,” did I look insulted, I thought to myself with a frown tugging at my lips, “but you’re just one man. Putting yourself at risk needlessly won’t stop this potential war and if it’s as bad as you think it is then what do you hope to accomplish?”

I didn’t like being brought into question like that, especially not by Gabe who clearly had no right to judge my abilities. What I hated most, though, was the fact that he was right and that I wanted to have no part in admitting it. “What does it matter? I’ll be damned before I sit on my ass and do nothing. Maybe burying your head in the sand worked for you all these years but that’s not my style.”

“I do hope,” Gabriel started in a tone that bordered on agitation but was tempered with strained patience, “that you are not calling me a coward.”

Had I said that? Maybe I hinted at it. Either way I hadn’t meant it like that. It irritated me that Gabriel would throw it back in my face in that unnervingly calm manner of his. “I don’t have to call you a coward when you act like one.” I was angry and really he was asking for it with that borderline passive aggressive attitude of his. I wished he’d just yell at me so we could get this over with already.

“The only thing I’m afraid of,” Gabriel went on as if he wasn’t bothered by my aggression which only fanned the flames of my anger, “is you getting yourself killed for this. The Order isn’t going to “bury it’s head in the sand”, to borrow a line from you, and sooner or later they’re going to take notice.”

I laughed. It was a derisive sound that passed my lips before I had time to think better of it. “You think The Order is the biggest of my problems? Gabriel I haven’t been hunting vampires or wolves or even misguided Fey Children, I’ve been tracking demons. If you think the Order is going to come after me for doing their job for them then you don’t understand the magnitude of the situation here. They don’t even have the resources to go after our kind any more. They barely have the resources to fend off this new wave of demonic presence. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if they offered me a job at this point.”

“You say that as if it’s supposed to ease my mind. It doesn’t. But,” I could hear the sigh in Gabriel’s voice, “you’ll do what you want. I can only hope that you’ll be safe.”

I was infuriated and frankly I’m not even sure I had any right to be. Why couldn’t Gabriel just have it out with me so this could all be over with? Did he always have to be this difficult when he was right? I should have said I was sorry, I should have said I understood, I should have said anything but what came out of my mouth. “You’re damn right I will.”

My independence is everything. When I fight, I fight alone. The price for this alienation tonight would be a very big and empty bed. As I slammed my bedroom door shut I had to wonder if it was at all worth it. Maybe the price of independence was higher than I could afford.

Ran always has this way of inspiring a Vincent muse. It's been far too long but that's what vacationing will do to you. I look forward to routine again in a week or so. At any rate I decided to do something I'm not entirely good at and so this is written in *GASP* first person. I wanted some practice with a style I don't tend to enjoy. I actually love how this turned out, shockingly.

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Been a while but I'm back at it, somewhat. I'm on vacation at the moment but I had a muse and Jack had class so the result was some writing. I'm not completely satisfied with it but then again I'm never completely satisfied with most that I do.

Warning: STAR TREK. Has NOTHING to do with the new movie, which by the way was fuckin' spectacular and awesome and I loved it.

For any fans who'd like to know this is set in 2367 at the battle of Wolf 359. And don't tell me that the massacre left no one but the Enterprise alive because that means you've never seen Deep Space 9. Hello, Sisko and Jake? Not to mention everyone else who managed to get into escape pods and make it out alive. Sorry, but some twit who thinks he knows it all told me no one else survived this battle and he's just dead WRONG. I like being right. Feels great.

“Engineering!” the captain's voice pierced the thick air of main engineering over the bustling officers scurrying about like ants trying to repair their hopelessly damaged hill. “Status report,” he demanded.

 

( Red Alert... )

 

 

 

Totally going out of order because a muse struck and this one fit. I really do need to get started on these though.

 

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So Jack found this list of 100 words to be used as prompts when you're running low on creativity. We thought it'd be a fun idea to try and write little ficlets and draw some quick pictures. Me with the writing, he with the drawing, as it were. So, I shall try and have up by tonight a ficlet for prompt number 1 and I'll take it from there. If anyone else wants in just say so and I'll be sure to read/view whatever you got going.

As a fun aside, Jack'll be drawing something to go along with what I've wrote so this should be interesting.

It had been a long time since Vincent had gone out of his apartment for something other than work at 9 p.m. In all honesty it had been at Gabriel's suggestion and it had been by sheer coincidence that Ilya was in New York. Despite the pleasant meal at a local cafe it was far from a date – Vincent made sure that detail was perfectly clear. It was one thing to be living with a wolf and quite another to let himself get romantically involved with a vampire. At this juncture in his life he didn't think it was a great idea to let himself get romantically involved with anyone. Ilya was good company, they talked primarily on Russian literature before moving over to politics for a short stint before realizing their views were a bit too skewed to continue having a polite conversation. The wine was tastefully selected, Vincent had to admit, and the entire evening went smoother than he would have imagined. It left him with something to think about but that didn't mean he would be inviting the man home.

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Edit: Added Ilya's part in all of this and finished the scene. Wow, I've actually completed something. I deserve a scooby snack for this.

 

 

 

Hope kept his feet moving when his mind knew better. Hope told him that everything was going to be alright when common sense said that nothing was anymore. The two voices vied heavily for dominance in his thoughts as he made the twenty minute walk trembling from the cold rain and fear. Did he really want to know? Wasn't it much easier to hope? Hoping without knowing any better was comforting, but hoping while knowing what the truth might be was folly. His feet kept him moving.

It was only a small sliver of a view but it won the battle in his thoughts. The roof of his homestead peeked just out over the hilly landscape. Tinted gray from the encroaching dusk, the scene before him after alighting the last hill was serene and bone chilling. He hardly noticed the now constant pattering of freezing rain. The air was still, enough so that for a moment he felt as if he were looking down on a picture. Up until now his resolve had not faltered, his feet had kept him moving, but it was hard to will himself down that hill.

His voice sounded foreign to him; small and timid. "Elise? Mama, Papa, don't tell me you are still here." It was far too quiet for anyone to be in this house. That is, anyone who was still alive. With the house standing and very little damage around in the field and surrounding area it was more than likely that they had already left like he had asked - no pleaded - them to. Relief made him give a nervous laugh at himself as he propped his travel weary form against the door. Of course they had left. What had he been thinking?

Through the coming onset of night he could see something in the field that caught his eye. At first it was just a misshapen heap but as his eyes adjusted he could make out the horrifying details. Fraise was laying just off to the side of the house, her twisted form shielded by the structure on his approach was now fully visible. The horse had been Elise's bridal dowry but everyone knew it was her horse. He could remember her as a young girl brushing it's reddish coat for hours. Her black eyes were still open and it was obvious that she had struggled as she died. He'd seen this kind of death before. The lack of physical damage now didn't seem to matter at all, it only served to amplify the dread. Gas.

"Elise!" He was barging down the door, eyes wild and searching. Relief no where to be found. The family room with the fireplace looked untouched. If they had left surely they would have taken a picture and a few valuables with them. Unless they left in a panic or a hurry. Or unless they didn't leave at all. Warren's heart was beating furiously and wildly without any sense of rhythm when his eyes trailed to the long hallway and the half opened door caught on something he couldn't see but knew deep down what it was. A trembling hand reached out for the wall as he unwillingly brought himself into view.

The floor must have shook, because he ended up on it in an instant after seeing her sprawling form. The blood was rushing so hard in his ears that he could barely hear his own screaming. His world narrowed to the short distance between them that might as well have been the span of continents. He couldn't stand and three times on his way over he had to stop to catch his breath. Crawling, he made his way over to her.

Numb hands traced over cold skin until they found her shoulders. The door swung open as he collapsed down beside his wife and both of his arms engulfed her body. She was cold but not yet rigid with death, it wouldn't register until later that she hadn't died all that long before he had gotten to her. There wasn't any room for guilt to enter his thoughts. Thoughts that were mostly empty. Nothing prepared you for how to think during grief.

He'd never wept so hard as he did lying there on the wooden floor with her body in his arms, her hair covering his face. She still smelled like he remembered on their wedding night. Like lilies. It wouldn't be for a very long handful of minutes before his eyes reopened to the darkening house around him. Thoughts began to take coherence again and his mind tried desperately to focus on analyzing facts instead of reeling from grief. She was laying in the doorway when she died, her body was facing inwards toward the room and not outward as he might expect from someone who should have been trying to get out. No, it was more like she was trying to get to something. His heart quit beating entirely.

Slowly, his eyes lifted from the ground and into the room toward the crib standing at the foot of what would have been their bed. As if in a drunken stupor he got to his feet, falling against the door frame for support before he dared to venture any further. Small items were all laid out on the bed. A blanket, tiny clothing, and a small toy. In the corner of the room an open luggage caught his eye for just a moment before he willed himself further in. It was the slowest meter and a half he ever crossed.

The infant was deceptively still, but he didn't dare to hope. He knew better by now that hope was an evil and malevolent force at work, at least in this part of France. He couldn't help it, his hand reached down into the handmade crib to caress the soft down-like hair, tears unwillingly spilling down over the child. The blanket that covered the body was hand stitched with "Mattieu" scrawling across in what he recognized as his mother's work. It was the same blanket they had wrapped his youngest brother in when he was this small. Neither of them lived very long, in some way it was morbidly fitting.

Warren's finger traveled over his son's tiny replicas while his other hand gripped the crib in support. The enraged yell took time to accumulate, but it didn't need all that much instigation after this. He felt it boiling in his gut and in the back of his mind he heard a laugh. By the time it was over his throat was raw and it had accomplished very little.

"Why?!" His attention was aimed upward and if looks could kill heaven would be worried. The only answer he got was a burning sensation around his neck that grew from just peculiar pinpricks of pain to unbearable in the span of a man's breath. The hand that reached put to yank the necklace off came back singed in the outline of a cross. Perhaps he had cursed the heavens a little too enthusiastically, but if it had just stopped at that he would have considered himself lucky. The sensation from before was back and stronger.

[Aaaaand, not done, but I have to go so I'm posting this now.]

With the boys and the truck gone his attention was brought forcefully back to his surroundings. The temptation to give into the sinking feeling in his gut was almost unbearable. Thoughts began to race. How far does this damage go? How many shells came this close to my family? Hope, an elusive creature, saw herself fit to perch in his ear and whisper back to the questions. Beaumont is a small village, she said, easily missed by invaders. Your family is smart enough to know when to leave, the voice continued, they wouldn't have stayed if it had been this close.

The few kilometers from the main road to Beaumont were tense. Everything he recognized was now unrecognizable in many respects. Before the war it took a better part of a man's day to cross this stretch of forest, now, with all the trees either gone or reduced to stumps, it didn't take long at all. His mind unwillingly snapped to the past. Images of his younger self running wild through this once forested area playing make believe soldier with his older brother and neighborhood friends. An unexplained anger rose in the back of his throat and he cursed himself for having been so naive. There was nothing fun about war and glory became meaningless in the face of this much devastation.

His side and neck ached but they were not enough to keep him from running. The build up and suspense was torturous and if he didn't find out soon how his family was he felt as if he could quite possibly explode. As if to punctuate his thoughts the blast of artillery fire sounded from far to his east. It was a very sobering sound and as he stopped to catch his breath and rest his thoughts traveled back to the young boys on that caravan headed for the front lines. He was not the only one in France to fear for his family's safety. Not by far, not even close.

He would have to pass through Beaumont to get to his family's farmstead further north and it was perhaps this detour that panicked him the most. It wasn't until his foot hit what he thought was a rock before he realized he was standing in what had been the center of the small village. Leveled was perhaps the military description for it, and the first to come to mind, but it could not accurately depict the wasteland he was standing on. Shock kept him from feeling the full brunt of the emotional shock wave. His brain simply could not wrap itself around this much loss and devastation. Finally his eyes settled downward onto the half remaining sign he had stumbled into. Only the 'Beau' was showing and the irony sneered upward from the blackened remains. There was nothing 'beautiful' here. Not any more.

With his chest tightening painfully he knew he had to continue on, the answers were just a twenty minute walk from where he stood and despite the chill that warned him of what he might find he had to know. In the back of his mind he could feel something stirring, some long dormant anger or perhaps a personality that had until now been repressed. It was a buzz of static in his thoughts that he didn't need right now and with some effort he ignored it, but it did not ignore him.

Outside of the makeshift command barracks, made out of torn and twisted sheets of metal, a soldier gives an ill-conceived celebratory leap. In his hand, rolled up to protect it from the elements, is his greatest possession on him at the moment; his granted request for a week's leave. Pain racked his side, he quite possibly ripped a few stitches out with that victory jump, but nothing - not even the constant rain - could dampen his spirits; he was going home. After 8 months of war, he was going home.

"Renarde! You are leaving us?" It was the voice of a friend running up to greet him. His smile seemed to be bigger than Warren's felt, the mark of a true friend.

"Only for a few days. France can hold the line that long, no?" He was practically glowing with excited energy.

"She has me, she'll hold until the last boche in Germany tries to cross that line. What have you heard from Elise? Has she produced a handsome little devil yet?" Maurice stepped up his pace to keep up with Warren's excited but loping trot. He had to shake his head with a partial and bemused smile at his friend's lack of a regard for his own health. Though it had to be noted that Warren had been healing much faster than anyone expected. Even the long gash around his neck was already fading into a scar. It just went to prove what kind of a soldier the man was, he figured.

"No word yet, but the post has been slow, she may have already had the baby," Warren sounded a little hopeful that she had not.

"Easy, Renarde, you look like you're planning on running all the way there," Maurice said with a laugh to punctuate it.

"I feel like I could! Ah, Maurice, you have no idea how -- I don't even know how to say it! I'm going to be a father. That's it. That's all there is to say." The thought of having to kiss both Elise and their new child goodbye would not even enter his thoughts. Caught up in his excitement, Warren grabs a hold of Maurice for a hug - a gesture his friend readily reciprocates.

"Now you  have me worried! I believe you plan on leaving me here alone, Lieutenant." Maurice held his chin high with the mock accusation for effect. 

"And let you take all the glory when we win?" Warren snorted with a wide smile. "Don't count on it just yet."

"Those medals have my name on them, why else would I be so eager to get you out of here?" The younger soldier's hand reached out to clap his Lieutenant's before sliding to rap once on his back. "Now go on, get going! Give Elise a good kiss for me and try not to get too jealous when she likes it better than your usual~!"

The caravan heading north to the front lines had just enough room for a homesick soldier on leave to tag along. His excitement only peaked through in the smile he was currently trying to fight back, but it was getting progressively easier as the countryside he called home became more and more bleak. As the convoy rumbled along slowly through partially destroyed roads the view changed around them - a warning of the horrors to come. Once rolling hills of emerald were now reduced to little more than mud strewn heaps of wounded earth. Excitement had quickly given away to anxiety and it must have become obvious because the young soldiers sitting around him grew fidgety with seeing an officer go from barely contained joy to this state.

"Is it as bad as they say out there," one of the young men asked with his voice betraying just how young he really was. Warren was startled when he took a closer look at the boy, he couldn't have been older than 16.

It took a moment but he tore his thoughts from his own personal troubles and felt the full impact of the question these kids were all too terrified to ask; are we going to die? Perhaps it was the anticipation of becoming a father that made his gut reaction urge him to tell these boys that everything would be alright, but he steeled himself to that temptation. They deserved the truth.

"It's worse," the Lieutenant in him answered gruffly but honestly. He made it a point to look every last one of them in the eyes and matched their horror and wide eyed fear with stern experience. "Right now, look around you. These are now your best friends. You will never forget any of the faces right here before you. See this?" His hand reached out to the boy sitting next to him, indicating his ears. "These are your ears, these are your eyes. Your back is his back, your life is his life. You had better get all the individuality you have out of your system before you reach that line. What is your name, son?"

"Gilles Lambert, sir."

"Not any more. There isn't a line you stand on out there, you are the line. You, the man next to you, every single body on that front are the only thing that stands between those boche and your home. You don't watch straight ahead of you, you watch to your left and to your right. You watch every man's back and he watches yours because you aren't an individual any longer. If you let the man next to you die it is a sure bet you're next. Keep your heads down when you walk in the trenches, a moving helmet is an easy target." He was racking his brain to think of all the advice he could tell them before they had to part a few kilometers up the road at his stop. "Don't eat anything that touches trench water and try not to look down too often at what is floating in there." Finally he ran out of steam and they all sat in contemplative silence while the view outside grew worse with every meter they crossed.

"I have been through more rotations than I'd like to count and remember," Warren concluded as the convoy rolled slowly to a stop and he knew this was where he'd have to make it to Beaumont on his own. "Stick to the men beside you and you'll be home in no time." Their faces were still bleak when he alighted the ground out of the back of the truck and he stood along the road to wave them off until they turned around a damaged hill and were gone from sight.

To my Love,

    I am overjoyed to receive your letters. So many have been coming back to our neighbors and none bring good news. The Fourniers lost both of their sons and their youngest has come down with a terrible fever, we fear they might lose him too. Your father has been in town all week with the repair effort but it is becoming clear that Beaumont will be lost. As you read this we have already begun to leave, most likely. I know in these times that getting the mail sent and delivered is not a top priority, it may be a month entirely before you get this. I do not dare to hope that by that time this will all be behind us. There is talk of heading for Verdun herself and if we can ever settle on where is best to flee to I will hope that I can find you when I arrive.
    I must confess that I am hesitant to travel. The baby could come at any time and the road is no place for a birth. Then again, neither is war but that cannot be helped. We should have left sooner, the roads are little more than cobble now. The horses will have to do, there is no possibility of leaving them behind. The poor beasts are as frightened as I've every seen them be from all the noise. One has already run off, Brune. She was my favorite, as you know. We'll have to make do with the other three, it should be enough for us to get to someplace safe. If such a place in France still exists.
    The rain has been awful, I think of you out in it and worry for your health. Are you warm? Do you get enough to eat? When was the last time you've slept in a bed? There's more I think of but would not ask you, you've been through enough. I know you think of me, and you should know I think of you too. Your mother has been so generous and kind, I feel as if I am truly her daughter and despite circumstances Renaud fills this small home with laughter almost every night. We talk of  you at dinner and it is obvious that he is proud. I know he wont say it but he misses you and Jacques terribly. We expected this to be a long war, but I don't think anyone quite anticipated it would be this long. Make it back, mon loup. Even if all of France is lost, make it back.
    I would write forever but there is work to be done. I hope when this reaches you that I will be close behind it. I will find you. I promise. I love you and I miss you.

With all of my heart,
Elise.

To my sweet Elise,
   
    I don't have much to say, I fear. The weather is terrible and grows more bleak day after day. I lost my picture of you during the last scramble to the elements, if you have the chance to get another one taken I could really use the replacement. Maybe you could try and get in the vineyard for the background, I miss tending the fields. I miss a lot of things, really. Mostly you, and of course hot meals, but mostly you. I won't tell you about what's going on here, I don't want any of that in your head. Don't read the news, if you haven't already, none of it is good.
    I've put in a request for leave, if I've done my math correctly you're due in a month and I want to be home for the birth. I've yet to receive word on it, but I promise you'll be the first to know. If I can't make it home by then, I will eagerly await your correspondence at the first moment you can spare the time. I'm sure you've heard enough of my mother's lectures by now, she never seems to run out of advice. You are going to be a wonderful mother, I can only hope I'll be half as good as a father.
    Considering the circumstances I am fairly confident I will get the leave time. I know I shouldn't tell you this, you'll worry, but it does improve my chances of getting home to see you. I've been shot. The bullet did a good job of missing most of my major organs, I'm telling you if it were a Frenchman on the other end of that gun I wouldn't be writing you at all. I won't be running any time soon, which is unfortunate because the rookies would very much like a football rematch. We beat them last month on our rotation off of battle. There's been talk of a tournament, anything to take our minds off of the trenches.
    My biggest fear, the one that haunts me nightly, is that I will not be the man you married when I return. There will be no forgetting this. Any of it. I hope you are safe. I know none of you want to leave the farm but I can hear the thunder of artillery even now and I am miles away from the front lines. I know it is our home and our land but I will beg you again to reconsider staying. You are too close to all of this, far too close. I have looked at a map, Beaumont-en-Verdunois is under 20 kilometers away from this hell. Every minute this battle drags on is another minute I worry. I know you've made your decision clear but think of our child if you will not think of yourself. Your letters are a comfort, but they are not enough to persuade me that you're safe. Please, Elise, I will beg you if I needs must but I cannot bear the thought of losing you. I have already lost a brother and countless friends to this madness, I cannot lose you too. I can lose the land, it does not mean nearly half as much as what you mean to me. If you will not reconsider I will desert to come and find you. I would rather be a traitor than a widower.
    None of this has been easy, but I promise you we'll make it through. I think of you always.

With all my love, your husband at war,
Warren.

I feel like I should continue writing but for the life of me I have no inspiration what so ever. Oh I have plenty of ideas but putting them down is a bitch and a half. I don't get why I'm having so much trouble writing, usually it comes pretty easily. Feh. I'd like to say fuck it all and trash this entire concept but whatever.

So this is fun. I can make posts to livejournal on this iTouch anywhere there is an Internet signal I can access. Sweet. It's actually not all that hard to type with once you get the hang of typing with your thumbs. Though I think I may go blind from the small screen. Imagine trying to type all 50k words on this thing. LOL

Eh, not making it to 50,000 and I'd prefer no patronizing posts of "you can do it!" and "if you say you wont, then you wont." No shit. By the converse if I say I'm a 1200lb gorilla does that make me a 1200lb gorilla? Just wondering. Cause that would be fun.

Truthfully everything I've written so far is just one piece of shit after another. I'm  not happy with any of it. I'm not fishing for compliments either. I hate that. I know it's just supposed to be a rough draft but my god...I have no plot, my characters are fairly lifeless, I have no cohesiveness to any of it...I could go on, I've given it plenty of thought.

I know it already. "It's just for fun", "It's just a rough draft," etc. Well it's not fun, I'm far, far behind schedule and none of it so far has given me any inspiration to finish.

In summary: I quit.

I'm having far too much fun writing in the present tense but it would be really horrendous to do that for the entire novel. Therefore the backstories I write will be in that format and I think it works really well to separate it from the time frame the actual story takes place in. It's also more...ah...descriptive in the emotional sense? Something. Anyway, here's the first part of Warren's.

( Wedded Bliss )

Not finished, but I thought I'd post what I have. It's Warren and Ira getting to know each other a little better, and god does he suck at this. Enjoy.  It's 3,019 words written today. I'm sort of proud.

Edit: Added Warren's response. Le Fin.

( Read more... )
( Warren's turn. )

This has absolutely nothing to do with Nanowrimo but Dad decided to surprise me with an REO Speedwagon concert and it was AWESOME. So, if you don't know who REO Speedwagon is shame on you. Here's some of my personal favorites of theirs that they played. Listen. Learn. Enjoy.

Edit: Went back and revamped it because for some reason the songs were cut short. \o_O/ Hope this works.

Vincent develops a conscience and Gabriel's secret is out. Word count so far is now at: 15597. I'm slowly catching up to where I need to be. Slowly.
( Dun dun dun? )</div>